August 2, 2013 The Dog-Eat-Dog World of Model U.N. By ANJLI PARRIN IT was the era of Prohibition. The crime bosses had convened an emergency summit in Atlantic City. Violent bootleg wars in Chicago and New York were threatening their businesses. “Gentlemen, take down Al Capone? Have you all lost your minds?” asked an exasperated Bugsy Siegel. “We need to let whatever’s happening in Chicago happen in Chicago, and work on stabilizing New York and making sure that our supply lines are also stable.” In a shiny top hat and period dress, Jocelyn Perry, a University of Pennsylvania senior, tapped her gavel to let Bugsy know his speaking time had elapsed before recognizing the gambling kingpin Meyer Lanksy. The rest of the students-cum-gangsters sneered and ridiculed one another, jostling for supremacy over America’s illicit trade. Meanwhile, in nearby meeting rooms, 1,200 students in other small “committees” recreated scenes from the Civil War, a Pakistani cabinet meeting and the cult TV series “The Wire.” This is not F.D.R.’s Model United Nations, that rigid simulation of General Assembly protocol and decorum. Conferences like this one in Philadelphia, hosted by the club at Penn, have turned MUN, as it’s called, into a full-fledged sport, with all the competitiveness and rowdiness that suggests. Today, there are official sponsors, a ranking of schools and, much to the chagrin of traditionalists, non-U.N. role play. MUN’s roots are older than the United Nations itself. In 1927, Harvard invited nine colleges to a simulation of the League of Nations, nearly a decade after that body’s creation in the wake of the First World War. Today, anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 high school and college students in this country attend Model U.N. each year, according to the United Nations Association of the United States of America. In classic MUN, students represent the positions and values of assigned countries, adhering to official protocols when speaking, negotiating and drafting resolutions. Consensus is important, and the process of arriving at innovative solutions to global problems the goal. That is still the prevailing model. But a new breed of Model U.N., popular among student-run clubs at elite universities, has a distinctly different philosophy. Their “crisis committees” focus on a single historical event (the 1929 Atlantic City conference of crime bosses, for example) and fantasy recreations (“Star Wars,” “Harry Potter”). Participants battle it out in four-day conferences in hopes of winning a coveted gavel, awarded to the strongest member on each committee, and schools with the most “best delegates” top the new rankings. Best Delegate, a MUN consulting company founded in 2010, gets the credit — or blame — for divvying up the North American playing field into two circuits for its rankings. It dubbed the student-led teams that frequent college-hosted conferences the World Division and the faculty-led teams that mostly attend organization-hosted conferences the National Division. An estimated 12,500 students attend World Division college conferences in the United States and Canada, and the number is growing. In 2010-11, there were 18 conferences hosted by some of the country’s most elite universities; in 2012-13 there were 25. Only seven simulated the actual United Nations. Not everyone is happy with the way Model United Nations is evolving. Some veterans object to a new competitiveness fueled by the rankings. (Penn, Georgetown, the University of Chicago, Harvard and the West Point Military Academy nabbed the top spots this year.) “It goes against the purpose and point of Model U.N. and, for that matter, the real U.N.,” said Phill Venice, a University of Pennsylvania senior who has participated in 37 conferences. While enjoying the camaraderie and intelligent debate, he said, students are less concerned with working together to achieve common solutions than in standing out to the committee chairperson, who chooses a winner based on contribution to the proceedings. Amandla Ooko-Ambaka agreed. In Europe and Africa, where she first became involved with Model U.N., she said the focus is more on the academic element of debating. After two years on the traveling team at Yale, she became frustrated with all the politicking and petty tactics. “Not only did I have to put together a good position paper and know one or two things about my topic,” she said, “but I had to worry about someone stealing my USB stick,” where delegates often store their work. Parvathy Murukurthy, a senior at the University of Chicago and member of the college circuit’s first all-star team, isn’t pointing fingers but says that “entire sections of my resolution have been duplicated into other people’s resolution.” Delegates say backstabbing is less common in crisis committees because they’re smaller (about 20 people while a General Assembly re-creation might have 300), with more chance to distinguish oneself. Underscoring just how extreme the competition has become, many students refer to a phenomenon known as the “golden gavel,” in which a delegate sleeps with the chairperson in the hopes of winning. Two students told me they are convinced they lost an award this way. Others I spoke with had only heard rumors — but, they added quickly, not involving regular competitors. One thing is clear. Chairpersons, who are appointed by their clubs, are all-powerful. They run their committee, and often research and write up each character’s portfolio of powers. “Essentially, the chair decides what’s what,” Mr. Venice said, “and the chair decides what’s what without really any guidance. I can’t think of another sport where that would fly, to be honest.” While conferences organized by nonprofit organizations benefit from a board made up of professors and former United Nations employees and diplomats, World Division conferences are run by undergraduates who control the logistics, financing and preparations. Penn’s last conference, sponsored in part by Lufthansa, had 300 students working committees. “It’s a point of pride for a lot of American conferences that it’s all student-run,” said Shunsuke Hirose, Columbia’s head delegate. IN the corner of a small meeting room at the Philadelphia Sheraton, Rodolfo Diaz listened to the other delegates and scribbled on a legal pad, responding to their notes, which had piled up on his desk. At 5 feet 6 inches, the bespectacled 21-year-old comes across as unintimidating, but as Harvard’s head delegate he is a force. “It’s ironic,” he told me. “People think the more forceful or aggressive you are, the easier it will be to pull yourself as the leader. Actually, it creates a lot of resentment.” His strategy for winning involves making friends, and building consensus in support of his position. Three days into the competition, the room reeked of body odor and stale junk food. Empty potato chip and Pop-Tarts packets littered the floor. Mr. Diaz, who was playing the role of Grand Admiral Martio Batch in a “Star Wars” crisis, tucked his grandfather’s silver dog tag behind his tie and affixed a pin given to him by the commander at West Point, where he had participated in his first college conference. As Batch, he was defending the autocratic Imperial Galactic Empire. Two defectors were sitting in the corridor plotting. They had managed to assassinate Jabba the Hutt, who, in this rendition, had been running the empire. They had also taken control of the second Death Star in an attempt to establish their own empire. The remaining generals, politicians and prophets of the dark side were scrambling to preserve the status quo, under the watchful eye of Lord Vader, who periodically entered the room — menacing in a costume of black chest armor, helmet and cape, and flanked by two hooded assistants — to provide updates. Each delegate tries to further his character’s agenda by forming alliances and outmaneuvering the others in the room. Batch’s goal was to preserve the imperial navy. “I thought the best way to do that was by being loyal to the empire, which was under control of a dictator,” Mr. Diaz said, “and when he got killed, to Darth Vader, who was second in line.” The tactic worked, and at the end of the weekend, he was named best delegate. Mr. Diaz, who will study at Cambridge University in the fall, had become involved with MUN during high school in his native Puerto Rico. “I’m not a big sports person,” he said, “but being part of the Model U.N. was like being part of a team. It was a really good community that worked together and hung out afterward.” Kevin Felix Chan, a co-founder of Best Delegate, describes the appeal this way: “Sports for smart people with social skills.” MANY attribute the new MUN’s popularity to a larger societal change. Governments are no longer the only ones shaping the global order, while social-media tools provide individuals with wider platforms from which to mobilize. “The shift to crisis committees represents the growing influence of these formal and informal groups,” Mr. Chan said. “The Arab Spring movement, which was one of the top five most simulated topics last year, is a prime example of students learning from the crisis-based decision-making that takes place in the real world today.” Crisis committees enable a more nuanced understanding of history, he said. Participants can see things from the other side — say, representing the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis. A onetime delegate for Yale, Ryan Villanueva quit his job at Goldman Sachs in 2010 to start Best Delegate with Mr. Chan, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles. They met while competing, and now help high schools, universities and nonprofit organizations create Model U.N. systems and travel the world live-blogging at college-run conferences. Mr. Villanueva sees heated competition as only natural. “These students and teachers value a level of competition inherent to their culture of prestige and awards,” he said. “There’s a certain student at these schools who wants to be in a decision-making position. They want to handle the excitement of crisis, and, frankly, they care less about the U.N. and about broader national affairs. That’s where the ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Star Wars’ stuff comes in.” In the traditional Model U.N., delegates can’t stray very far from their country’s official position. National Model United Nations, run by the nonprofit National Collegiate Conference Association, is the country’s largest traditional conference. Its executive director, Michael Eaton, sniffs at the World Division approach. “NMUN takes a much more intellectual attitude to Model U.N.,” he said. Many NMUN participants take Model U.N. as a for-credit course, designed to teach international relations, United Nations protocol and leadership skills. “We’re asking people to actually do research in foreign policy, not to do MUN as a caricature,” he said. About rankings, Mr. Eaton added, “It’s not like basketball.” Still, NMUN is one of the few traditional conferences that anoints winners. “We give awards,” he said, “but it is really difficult to gauge an individual’s learning.” Worried about the impact of competition, the association has held a vote among NMUN faculty advisers on continuing the practice, with no consensus. Arka Mallela, president of Penn’s International Affairs Association, which runs its conferences, believes the rankings have improved performance. As the circuit becomes more formalized, teams are investing more in training. “It was always competitive between schools, but having someone outside of the circuit looking at it and saying ‘Well, this school did better’ has really made people focus on winning,” Mr. Mallela said. “It’s forced a lot of the schools that are good — Georgetown, ourselves, Harvard — to really grow in terms of how we improve delegates and how we train delegates.” Before conferences, his team reviews strategies and holds mock sessions over a weekend. The University of Chicago may have the most rigorous prep. Newbies meet about four times a week for six weeks before their first conference. “We take the competitive aspect of Model U.N. really seriously,” said Ms. Murukurthy, team vice president, who read at least three books on her assigned topic, as well as news and academic articles. “I’ve found this is extremely necessary because it gives you leverage in committee,” she said. AT Harvard’s conference in March — the Super Bowl of MUN, attended by some 5,000 students — the exhausted members of the Columbia team straggled into a hotel room and began an animated re-creation of the afternoon’s events. Cesar Rodriguez, a sophomore, collapsed on the bed. After relating how he had organized and then backed out of a coup in Venezuela, deceiving fellow cabinet members, he speculated on his chances of winning. Delegates took swigs from a wine bottle containing a blend of vodka and cranberry juice, and every few minutes, someone would spontaneously break into song. No formal debates are conducted on the last day of the conferences, so the parties following the Saturday night Delegate Dance go late into the night in rooms across the hotel. Wild nights are nothing new to Model U.N. During Harvard’s 1980 conference, guests at Boston’s Park Plaza complained of “loudness, water fights, abuse of toilet paper, and general partying among the 1,700 delegates,” according to an article in The Harvard Crimson that year. Mr. Rodriguez, switching frequently to Spanish midsentence, argued with teammates about which MUN has the best parties (McGill University seemed to get a lot of the votes) and discussed details for Columbia’s own conference, in its eighth year. “MUN parties can be infamous,” he told me, fiddling with his high school class ring, engraved with his name on it. “You have to try your hardest in committee. I was trying so hard to win. But once it’s done, we have fun.” Anjli Parrin graduated in May from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 23:05:54 +0000
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